Review: ‘Bourek,’ About a Group of Drifting Souls

“Bourek,” which takes its title from a flaky Mediterranean pastry, is described in the publicity notes, somewhat optimistically, as a comedy. Viewers, however, are unlikely to be more than marginally amused by its fair-to-middling acting, enervated plot and forcibly diverse group of drifting souls gathered on the fictional Greek island of Khronos.

That island, though, is languidly pretty, photographed in tones of butterscotch and cerulean by the Serbian cinematographer Vladimir Subotic (a regular collaborator of the writer and director, Vladan Nikolic). In this burnished idyll, assorted characters bicker and lounge against a backdrop of news reports heralding social and financial catastrophe.

An American billionaire (William Leroy) hunkers with his money and his gold-digging honey, waiting for the apocalypse promised by a white-suited televangelist (gustily played by Paul Sevigny, Chloë Sevigny’s brother). A radiant Greek woman (Katerina Misichroni) struggles to protect her debt-squeezed restaurant from a pushy developer while caring for an amnesiac British D.J. Around them, a flotsam of idiosyncratic travelers — a Yeats-quoting Libyan refugee; a Turkish drug dealer-cum-baker — ebbs and flows, saddled with naïvely hackneyed dialogue and a director who seems to be entertaining only himself.

Yet Mr. Nikolic, whose 2015 feature “Allure” had an engaging originality that this movie lacks, has a talent for conjuring wistful disillusion among those buffeted by the winds of capitalism and change. When faced with disaster, he seems to be saying, go back to first principles: Eat, dance, fool around. And steal as much money as you can.